You have found the home of 'Being Me', Fran Hill's blog. Browse for a while, have a laugh, and if you like what you read, you'll like my book'Being Miss' which you can order from this site. My main website is at www.franhill.co.uk where you'll find pictures of George Clooney and Rufus Sewell. I may be lying about that, though.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND ON THIS BLOG

Friday, 15 July 2016

Reasons to eat plums

My husband came home from his allotment yesterday with some gooseberries.

When I say 'some', I mean 'enough to make a crumble to feed Warwickshire'.

It was a sunny evening. We sat at the garden table with the gooseberries in a giant bowl between us. 'I need to prepare these for the freezer,' he said. 'Do you want to help me get them done before we cook dinner?'

I stood up so that I could see him over the tower of fruit. 'No, I don't want to, particularly,' I said. 'But if I don't, I fear dinner will happen in the early hours of tomorrow morning.'

I sat down again, and began. He was using a tiny pair of scissors, but I was using my fingernails, which was quicker. Pick off the top. Pick off the tail. In the pan. Pick off the top. Pick off the tail. In the pan. Pick off the top. Pick off the t -

'This is a kind of hell,' I said, after half an hour. 'Did you hear Farming Today the other morning? They were saying that gooseberries were an unpopular dessert ingredient these days with Brits. I WONDER WHY.'

It's not only the hard work, though.

1. They're hairy. They remind me of cold-weather testicles. I told my husband this and he nearly cut off his thumb with the scissors.

2. They're sour, and the average crumble needs fourteen pounds of sugar to make up for it. Forget the sugar, and your face will look like a cat's arse for a week.

3. They're not unlike peeled lychees in their resemblance to eyeballs. (My husband preferred that comparison to the testicle one.)

4. Lots of people don't like them, so if you had eight people round for dinner, and had cooked a gooseberry crumble or pie, only two people would want it. 'A yoghurt, anyone? They're only just out of date.'

5. They go through the digestive system like a fast tube train through a tunnel with a stiff breeze behind it. I was going to say strong wind, but -

6. No one can agree how to say it. Some people say 'goozbree' and some people say 'guzbree' and others say 'goozberry'. I've also heard people call them 'goosegogs'. The world doesn't need any more conflict. Nobody has that trouble with 'plum'.

We were on gooseberry number 9,376,501 when my husband said, 'Why do people who feel left out say they're playing gooseberry?'

'When I've done another million,' I said, 'I'll look it up.'

Google came up with a very clear answer. 'No one really knows.' The most frequent idea was this, from DictionaryCentral.com:

Play gooseberry ‘be an uncomfortably superfluous thirdperson with two lovers’ goes back to the early 19th century, and may have originated in the notion of a chaperone (ostensibly) occupying herself with picking gooseberries while the couple being chaperoned did whatthey were doing (gooseberry-picker was an early 19th-century term for a ‘chaperone’).
As for why they're even called 'goose' berries in the first place, Google doesn't know that either. My favourite etymological dictionary www.etymonline.com says helpfully, 'No part of the plant seems to suggest a goose.' This seems reasonable, although, do geese have testicles? Just saying.

Anyway, my husband says he's got three times the amount he brought home yesterday still on the allotment, waiting to be picked: enough to cure constipation in everyone in the whole wide world or ensure that no one ever comes here again for a dinner party.

I believe I'm grateful that I've never encountered a gooseberry here in the U.S. They sound similar to cranberries, with their deceptively jolly red color and complete lack of any natural sweetness of their own.

The garden of the house where I grew up was full of mature fruit trees where dead pets were buried beneath we were told. There was a productive gooseberry bush. So in our case what was" found under the gooseberry bush " was old bones.

There are lots of foods that I would never bother with unless I had to. Bananas are nice and labour saving. And baked beans. (Beenz.) In fact, most things. When I'm a lonely old woman I shall just eat toasted cheese (cheez) and bananas. (Bananaz.)

About Me

I'm a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire.

'Being Miss' on Amazon Kindle, from FeedARead, or directly from me (UK) - go to 'Add to Cart'

Recent review: Funny and easy to read, Fran Hill's 'Being Miss' charts the life of a teacher in a secondary school...in one day. The day is jam packed with unfortunate incidents and sharp, insightful descriptions. Beautifully written with a delightfully flippant narrator. Great fun!

Being Miss by Fran Hill - get paperback version sent directly to you (in UK). Thank you!